Silvia Tortosa and the Rhine Mermaid

Last week Silvia Tortosa died. I was overwhelmed. Something similar happened to me when Amparo Muñoz and Ágata Lys died. These last two actresses had been recovered in Family by Fernando León de Aranoa, and both had worked with directors such as Carlos Saura. However, to give these women the place they deserve, it may not be necessary to link them to great men who legitimize them. And, perhaps, the latter is naive because everyone needs a perspective that gives them meaning in the cultural constellation.

Three documentaries have recently been filmed that reinterpret the role of these artists in our history: The woman who said no, by María José Camacho, about Amparo Muñoz; Women without censorship, of Eva Vizcarra; water Marisol, call me Pepa, by Blanca Torres. All three address the combination of extreme vulnerability and courage of these women; We talk about a period in which it was necessary to ventilate the country of repression and the female nude was used as a pretext for a liberation that objectified and broke many intelligent and beautiful actresses. We grew up with these contradictions. We learned a lot, but we could have learned a lot more.

My shock at these losses has biographical roots and exemplifies how culture shapes us. When I was little, we played to choose between Blanca Estrada or Susana Estrada; We portrayed each other: if you chose the first, you opted for the angelic model and if you chose the second, you opted for the demonic and transgressive model. Susana Estrada evidenced the political power of the decontextualized nude ―Tierno Galván y la teta― outside the darkness of a room When I was a girl, I didn’t even know that Rociodurcal, Monicarrandal y Silviatortosa They were separated into first and last names, and were not just organic morphology, a copula of liquid and vibrant consonants. I sang “Aipollou, aipollou” – that’s how the “I love you” in English songs sounded to me –, Amparo Muñoz was the most beautiful woman in the world and Silvia Tortosa radiated an elegance and sweetness quintessential in an ideal opposite to that of Ágata. Lys or Nadiuska, panther women, who represented that feminine sexual pleasure so dangerous for men.

I still remember how I covered my eyes at the summer movies so as not to see the trailer for Lorelei’s Claws: Silvia Tortosa plays a good, beautiful and civilized teacher who is the antagonist of Helga Liné, reptilian mermaid of the Rhine. We grew up still immersed in this contrast between the femme fatale, monster, beast, harpy, vampire, the one who will suck the core of the better with her dentate vagina, and that other understanding, reasonable woman, committed to the imperative to please, the angel of the home. I almost always preferred to be a Rhine mermaid, but I loved Silvia Tortosa. In the Novelwhich adapted literary classics that were played after eating, and in the Study 1. In Panic on the Trans-Siberian, The Frenchman’s garden, The sickle and the Martinez y presentiments, This one from Santi Tabernero. As presenter of Applause. As a theater actress in works by Valle, Alberti or Wilde. As a film director, cupletist, memoirist and Hispanicized Martha Stewart on her internet channel. A woman who never stopped working. She was about to participate in a discussion about the theatrical adaptation of Daniela Astor and the black box. The actress Laura Santos tried to convince her and she showed interest, but she must have felt weak. I would have loved to meet her. That fetishistic side that we iconoclasts have would have come out.